The Six Steps to Effective Customer Engagement: Step 4, Enable Business Collaboration (Social Networking at Work)

(Part of an ongoing series of articles about Customer Engagement strategies.)

"For a company to successfully earn the trust of its customers, there must exist a vibrant culture within the organization that recognizes the importance of trust and enables and empowers employees to act upon that perspective. - "The State of Customer Experience Capabilities and Competencies," SAS Institute Inc. and Peppers & Rogers Group

Just as consumers are seeking to support themselves and reach out to social communities when they need assistance, so are the people who make up businesses. Businesses should capitalize on the acceptance of collaboration and social networks by their employees through providing them the same tools with which they are familiar from outside the work environment: blogs, wikis, function-driven communities, profile updates, etc. By creating collaborative environments throughout the organization, a company can become more productive while simultaneously embracing what their employees are seeking as individuals.

Collaborative environments help break down – or eliminate entirely – traditional cross-departmental and “business vs. IT” barriers. Creating a social environment promotes communication and cooperation and ultimately yields a faster time-to-market for new business initiatives.

By putting in place the same social structures that people are using in their personal lives, businesses can become more productive, more collaborative, and improve employee satisfaction and retention.

The Six Steps to Effective Customer Engagement: Step 3, Deliver Seamless Experiences for Delighted Customers

(Part of an ongoing series of articles about Customer Engagement strategies.)

Automating processes and empowering customer self-service by offering rich multichannel points of engagement can result in operations cost savings of 33% or more.

Market leadership requires delighting customers every time over a sustained period. Each interaction should be direct and personalized: from empowering new customers to on-board themselves, to delivering compelling and personalized offers and providing consistent experiences across the lifespan of the relationship, to giving today’s customers the ability to self-help that they are demanding. These personalized interactions can result from previous purchasing history, channel preference, and up-to-date transaction information from inside the company or across affiliate organizations. And, when the situation calls for it, a specific customer engagement needs to flow across departments and across channels without making the customer feel like they are doing all the work.

The reality is that companies often fail to delight their customers, not because they don’t want to do so, but because they simply don’t have the technology required to make it possible. Companies can’t provide the information necessary to meet the customer’s expectations, and they can’t offer the same level of service across different channels. Customers can do one thing via a web portal, another via an IVR system, and yet another only if they call and speak to a live representative – and information does not flow freely between the various systems and departments.

Agile, enabling technologies must be brought to bear to expose the right data and provide access to features at the right time, ensuring the customer only has to answer questions a single time whether they are sitting in their office or using their cell phone on vacation.

The Six Steps to Effective Customer Engagement: Step 2, Have Smarter Conversations

(Part of an ongoing series of articles about Customer Engagement strategies.)

Companies must be prepared to engage ‘anytime and anywhere’ with their prospects, customers and partners. However, critical data and the customer-oriented information required for smart conversations is scattered across back-office systems and repositories, each with unique data structures and dedicated interfaces that are typically not designed to engage directly with customers. This makes it difficult to access, collect, and present relevant information in a meaningful way, limiting the ways that companies can reach out to customers and vice versa. Customers demand rich conversations and interactions that draw upon the information and functionality of this conglomeration of business systems, and they want those conversations to happen across the entire spectrum of communication channels.

Smart conversations should be customer-focused, direct, informed and personalized. Relevant data should be seamlessly collected from across the company to deliver real-time historical context; and the entry of new transaction information must be coordinated across processes that flow throughout the enterprise. Siloed systems make this a near impossibility, so enabling technology must be applied to draw upon the power and previous investment in legacy systems and synchronize real-time data prior to either reaching out to the customer or enabling self-service capabilities.

Smart conversations can be automated and allow customer or partner self-help; they can be two-party with an internal knowledge expert providing guidance to a customer; or they can be multi-part and collaborative. But, in all cases, the right information has to be provided at the right time and delivered effectively – which is only possible when a company is aware of the information and functionality they already possess. What’s more, that information and functionality must then be accessible by relevant parties in an effortless and transparent manner.

By breaking down technology barriers and exposing the richness of existing investments, companies can provide customers with positive engagement each and every time they interact.

The Six Steps to Effective Customer Engagement: Step 1, Embrace a True Multichannel Strategy

(Part of an ongoing series of articles about Customer Engagement strategies.)

Since the early to mid-90s, communication channels have been emerging at a staggering rate. Business that had previously been conducted across only one or two primary channels less than twenty years ago – phone, mail order – is now happening across a dozen or more channels, and companies have been scrambling to keep up. The result has been a lack of strategic approach to communication channels, and companies finding themselves falling behind their customers.

The traditional solution has been to build channel-specific interaction points for customers and partners, including functionality within each channel that is often limited to technology constraints unique to that channel. This costly and time-consuming approach is reactive instead of proactive, and subsequently is certain to lag behind marketplace demands. This approach also makes it almost impossible for customers to begin a task in one channel then easily complete it in another channel, or get assistance from a customer service representative without having to provide the same information multiple times.

Instead, companies need to first create a shared foundation, including information, processes, and functionality that will feed – or ideally, drive – all channels. This strategy needs to encompass common services that the company wants to deliver to customers and partners, and then treat each and every channel merely as a window into those services.

Once there is a shared, common foundation for information, processes and functions communication channels simply become windows into the company, not confusing bolted-on appendages that are not synchronized.

A New Model for Customer Engagement: The Relationship Mindshift

(Part of an ongoing series of articles about Customer Engagement strategies.)

In this period of economic uncertainty – marked by some signs of renewed growth, but with continued softness in consumer confidence and cautious discretionary spending – companies must focus more than ever on maintaining customer loyalty, cross-selling and up-selling offerings, and acquiring new customers efficiently. Coupled with the continued emergence of the web, mobile platforms, and social networks as viable business channels, companies must be prepared to engage with their prospects and customers anytime, anywhere, via any channel, at their convenience, or they will lose relevance, customers and market share.

Today’s customer looks vastly different from the customer of five, or even two years ago – and tomorrow’s customer will be more different yet. Customers are not only tech savvy, but are increasingly on-line around the clock. They are more driven to find their own answers and solve their own problems, and, when they cannot solve their problems on their own, to meaningfully engage through social media with others who are trying to solve the same or similar problems.

More and more customers are also showing a preference for subscription-based offerings, which means that companies need to offer web-based services that promote customer ‘stickiness’ – loyalty, regular and repeated engagement, etc. – in order to maximize revenue. But, because consumers have more choices than ever, it is increasingly easier to “unplug” one service provider and “plug into” another, when a customer is unhappy.

The Relationship Mindshift

The first step toward meeting today’s customer where they live is to make a fundamental mindshift in how your company will create and maintain relationships with prospects, customers, and business partners.

People want meaningful and positive interactions with the companies with which they do business – every single time they do business with them – and they expect consistency across all communication channels. Focusing on building and maintaining these business relationships will be the most critical success factor for businesses moving forward, across virtually every industry sector.

Companies must be well-positioned to maximize the value of their relationships with customers and partners through the continual and rapid launch of creative offerings – recombined or bundled products/services, personalized and targeted campaigns, etc. – and then be able to measure the effectiveness of those offerings while also guaranteeing optimized service levels tailored to the unique needs of each individual consumer. This will require movement toward campaign-driven sales patterns, agile business systems, and proactive business intelligence/analytics. Without re-evaluating an organization’s approach to conducting business, and embracing the shift to enabling and maintaining long-term, positive relationships, companies will likely repeat common mistakes of the past: siloed systems, disjointed and inconsistent functionality, fragmented and inconsistent customer touch points, all of which lead to dissatisfied and frustrated customers.

Unhappy customers are ten times more likely to stop doing business with their current proviers.

A New Model for Customer Engagement

I recently collaborated on a white paper about effective customer engagement and what it takes from an operational and technological perspective to achieve it. So, over my next few posts, I'll share bits of that paper, including the key steps to take in order to enable multichannel customer engagement in today's ever-changing customer landscape.

First, an overview:

In today’s competitive business climate, customers expect more than ever from the companies with which they do business. Customers are tech savvy and want to engage with companies when, where and how they prefer, and they want that engagement to be meaningful, consistent and efficient. What’s more, as new communication channels continue to emerge at a staggering rate, effectively engaging customers has become even more complex. Companies that are willing and able to embrace a new way of engaging their customers will be better positioned for acquiring and retaining customers and building loyalty.

This series of posts will discuss the six steps to effective customer engagement, including embracing a true multichannel strategy, having smarter conversations, delivering seamless experiences for delighted customers, enabling business collaboration, leveraging affiliates, partners and bundled offerings, and measuring customer retention, loyalty and revenue potential through real-time business analytics.

Additionally, I will take a closer look at ‘relationship architecture’ – the technology foundation that streamlines and helps manage all aspects of customer-facing business initiatives. Establishing a relationship architecture will provide lasting benefits to the company, partners and the customer, ultimately leading to success for the business.

Only those companies willing to embrace today’s ‘rules of engagement’ will emerge as leaders over the next decade. Acquiring and retaining customers and building loyalty calls for ‘A New Model for Customer Engagement’.

SaaS != Hosted (Or at least it shouldn't have to!)

These days when people hear Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), they almost always interpret that to mean "hosted" or "in the cloud." That's perfectly understandable considering that many of the market leaders in SaaS also happen to be hosted offerings (Salesforce.com comes to mind!).

However, there's nothing necessary about delivering software in a hosted model in order to support SaaS or subscription-based pricing. After all, why does it matter where the software is installed -- in my data center, in a hosted data center, some of each -- when it comes to how or when I pay for it?

Dynamic and forward-thinking companies are getting this, and looks like we're about to start seeing more software that is available on-premise and/or in hybrid models -- in addition to "pure" hosted software -- in a SaaS/subscription/pay-as-you-go model. This helps businesses control their capital expenses, flex their usage and consumption of software both up and down, and get started on initiatives faster.

Software companies who recognize these benefits to their customers and embrace non-hosted subscription-based pricing models for their own offerings are teed up for growth as more and more of the market looks for ways to control costs and increase agility.

Barriers to Churn

These days it seems like the only real barriers to churn -- i.e. leaving one product/service provider for another -- are artificially-imposed early termination fees (ETFs). It used to be really hard to move from one provider to another for a wide range of reasons including differentiated offerings, difficulty in transporting data/information, or even things like not being able to take a phone number with you.
Technology and regulations have made most of those things very easy to overcome. And, with more and more providers offering great incentives for new customers, the enticement to move is at an all-time high. The result, however, doesn't appear to be that providers are working really hard to convince you not to leave -- quite the contrary, they seem more interested in the next person they sign up than the one(s) they just did. And, the natural result is that they threaten you with fees if you leave before your contracted subscription with them matures.
Why not go the other way around? Why not focus on providing customers with what they want and expect from you -- and making sure your enterprise technology "stack" can help you deliver it effectively -- than imposing penalties so customers are afraid to or cannot afford to leave? Imagine building loyalty, providing great service, and effectively communicating with customers as the carrot that makes them want to stay with you, instead of the ETF stick that forces them to.

Customer Interaction vs. Customer Engagement

I recently heard this comment, and it really hit home: customers have all kinds of interactions with a company -- good, bad, indifferent -- but the real question is whether or not they are engaging and staying engaged.

That may seem obvious, but it's a point worth making in today's "customer interaction management"/"customer experience management" world: sure, you can interact with customers and they with you, and you can even get all sorts of analytics on those interactions to try to figure out what they are and aren't liking. But, until you engage them, all you're doing is piling up numbers and stats about your customers...and not building loyalty.

Today's customers have virtually unlimited options with regard to with whom they do business, and the "always on" nature of mobile communications and emerging business via social network efforts makes it far too easy for customers to find and switch from one provider to another. The way to make sure that doesn't happen with your existing customers and/or encourage more to come to you isn't just to make sure they can and do interact with you...it's making sure that every time they interact they are engaged.

Companies need to provide rich, consistent, and fully-functional touchpoints to customers in every communication channel. If a customer can do something on the web, they should be able to do it via IVR and other voice systems, via SMS, via an iPhone app, etc....and they shouldn't have to deal with different information and/or functionality being available in different channels as is far too often the case these days. That can be very difficult for a company to do without incurring tremendous price up front and/or every time something changes about what processes/services they are offering to their customers.

That means that companies need to look to supporting technologies that lower that cost of publication and cost per channel of communication. True customer engagement demands it, and companies will need to adapt, or they will lose customers and fail to attract new ones.

Human-Facing BPM

For the last couple of years, the Gartners and Forresters of the world have been pointing out that traditional BPM offerings don't handle people nearly as well as they handle systems. This is generically called "the people problem" for BPM. And, one way the analysts described this was by saying that the BPM offerings weren't "human-centric" enough.

Lo and behold, what do all the traditional BPM players start doing? Saying their products are, in fact, "human-centric." Then they point to all the ways you can depict human involvement in processes, etc. In this manner, they basically took ownership of the analysts' own way to describe their shortcoming to hide the fact that they still have that very same shortcoming. Nice trick.

So, what I'd like to do is talk about Human-Facing BPM instead of human-centric BPM...since the industry has pretty much obliterated the meaning of human-centric. But, that begs the question, "What exactly do you mean by Human-Facing BPM?" Well, I'm glad you (I) asked...

Human-Facing means exactly that: the part of a process that actually faces the person or people engaged with a process, and including the very interfaces they use to accomplish their tasks. This is vastly different from human-centric which essentially defines the fact that there needs to be a person or people involved -- and to be fair, sometimes even includes the characteristics of that involvement -- but doesn't actually contain fully functional ways for people to accomplish the involvement.

For a BPM tool to be truly holistic, it really needs to go that next step and provide appropriate user interfaces -- in multiple channels of communication, not just a proprietary web portal -- based off the definition of the step that requires human involvement. And, in order to do that, it almost certainly requires a fundamental re-architecting for any BPM tool that wasn't built with that in mind in the first place, because it involves state management, session management (which some do) and also flexible and abstractable interface generation (or "rendering") which almost no viable commercial offerings can do.

So, when thinking about which BPM tool might be right for what you or your company is trying to do, make sure you think about the real human-facing aspects of your processes and see if the tool(s) being considered really can give you a leg up by automatically providing a wide range of rich, consistent, and user-friendly interfaces in all the different channels people are using these days: web pages, VXML/IVR systems, mobile devices, social media, and beyond.